Just like photography, you can purchase the latest greatest (read: expensive) stuff, but it can be accomplished with just a few tools until you get the hang of it and decide which direction you want to improve upon before getting ‘better’ gear. Initially I just used a black pen (one that I liked), a pencil, and some scrap paper that I cut into 3.5 inch square sheets… and I didn’t even know that there were step-outs for various patterns. I just took my pencil and put a dot in each corner, connected them to create an inner square, made a string (a random pattern inside the square), and then just started making designs with my pen to my whim (checkerboard, diagonal lines, dots, etc.) Then one day I found this site and started to play with various patterns.

Overtime, I wanted to add shading and found out that a softer lead was the way to go and I also realized that smudging the pencil also smudged my ink… so I invested in some softer lead (for my mechanical pencil – because that’s what I was using), a pack of ‘better’ pens in various tip widths, and some artist tiles (which happen to accept all kinds of media including watercolors) that were precut and a bit thicker paper. Soon, I wanted to add color, and decided I liked the look of watercolor, so I invested in some watercolor pen/brushes and a watercolor paper artist notebook (which is bigger than the 3.5 inch square tiles, but not too big – it’s 5.5 x 8 inches). Then I wanted to play with black tiles, so I invested in black artist tiles and a white gel pen… then I realized that I wanted to shade those black tiles and went looking for a white colored pencil and decided to invest in a set of watercolor pencils so that I could use all my art supplies if I wanted to…

So… what you ‘need‘ is simple — just a black pen, a pencil, and some paper. That’s it. Check out this url for the initial idea behind zentangle… check out this pdf for a more how-to… then to play with various tangle patterns, check out this url.

No, I don’t want the latest and greatest. Barring one focus stacking software that I want to buy at some point, I think I am done with the latest and greatest for a while.

When it comes to writing, I experimented a lot. Most of my writing is done initially with pen and paper (unless it is long, long stuff) – and I use fountain pens. What I discovered is that, between Word and Scrivener, you have enough. All the other writing apps out there, are just a waste. Simplicity, as I am discovering late in life, is key,